Some Attending Voice of the Faithful Meetings Find They Have No Voice
National
Catholic Register July 27-Aug. 9, 2003 by GREG BYRNES
Some
Catholics attempting to bring traditional Church teaching to discussions at
chapter
meetings
find themselves marginalized and in some cases subjected to old-fashioned
political hardball.
by
GREG BYRNES
Register
Correspondent
PROVIDENCE,
R.I. - Voice of the Faithful says it stands for giving the laity
a
greater voice in the running of the Church. But apparently, some
concerned
Catholics are not allowed a voice at the reform group's own
meetings.
Some
people suspect Voice of the Faithful, a self-proclaimed reform
movement
founded in the wake of the clerical sex-abuse scandals, has a
hidden
agenda and is an organ of dissent from Church teaching. Some
Catholics
attempting to bring traditional Church teaching to discussions
at
chapter meetings find themselves marginalized and in some cases
subjected
to old-fashioned political hardball.
The
Diocese of Providence, R.I., allows Voice of the Faithful to use Church
property
for meetings. Mark Gordon joined Voice of the Faithful after he
logged
onto its Web site, while Lawrence Burns joined at a meeting at
Christ
the King Church in Kingston, R.I. Both attended several public
meetings,
where they apparently didn't make many friends in high places.
In
June, they were blocked from attending a closed working session for
members
only.
Gordon and Burns said they joined Voice of the Faithful so
they could
witness to authentic Church teaching to people who were
being misled by
"We
were known to be members, but when it came time for this meeting
our
names had disappeared from the membership rolls," Gordon said.
"We
left. We didn't make a scene, and then [we] sent a protest to the
national
organization. They were shocked and said any meeting, open or
closed,
should be open to organization members."
But
the sentiment of some in the national organization, based in Boston,
was
not shared in Rhode Island.
"It
was a power play," Gordon said. "I protested to the local coordinator
about
our exclusion. The response was that I was not really a member of
Voice
of the Faithful in spirit. I was really a Trojan horse. Effectively, [the
coordinator
of the group] was trying to play a heavy-handed political game.
We
have informed him we are not giving this up. We are not going to be
hounded
out of Voice of the Faithful."
A
Voice of the Faithful spokeswoman, Luise Dittrich, attributed such
clashes
to the "growing pains" of the young organization. She added that
some
people have joined in order to disrupt meetings.
The
tendency of Voice of the Faithful to feature dissenting speakers has
eroded
support it enjoyed or might have enjoyed. Raymond Flynn, former
mayor
of Boston and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, was
recently
named spokesman for Your Catholic Voice, a group dedicated to
presenting
Catholic social teaching in the public forum. He heard many
firsthand
complaints about dissent in Voice of the Faithful.
"I
had a political talk radio program and spoke to literally hundreds of
people,"
Flynn said. "[Some] people were very disillusioned with church,
but
others were disillusioned with the movements that were being
developed.
These movements took on a tone that really was more
committed
to almost radical doctrinal change. Š It wasn't that they were
really
interested in their voice being heard but in demanding that their
political
philosophy be accepted."
Flynn
noted: "The goal was, if you cannot destroy the Church's message,
you
destroy the messenger: discredit the leaders, discredit the
priesthood."
Michael
Galloway, co-founder of Your Catholic Voice, added that there are
at
present certain "angry Catholics who have a bone to pick with the
Church,
who want to change the Church by their rules." He believes this
makes
it difficult to present Catholic social teaching as a basis for
public-policy
decisions.
Voice
of the Faithful's avowed goal of a more democratic Church hit a
rough
patch at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Some
attendees
at a foundational meeting of the Worcester affiliate were told a
two-thirds
majority vote of those attending was needed to start the group.
When
the resolution failed to get that supermajority of votes, the
Worcester
chapter was founded anyway, according to Laurie Letourneau,
a
Massachusetts pro-life activist, and Victor Melfa, president of the Holy
Cross
Cardinal Newman Society, who were at the meeting. Those not in
agreement
were simply free not to join.
Carol
McKinley, a member of the Massachusetts chapter of Faithful Voice,
an
organization that declares its loyalty to the magisterium, was
concerned
about what she heard about Voice of the Faithful and asked
permission
to attend a meeting of 45 Boston Voice of the Faithful chapters
in
Newton, Mass., in June.
"I
wanted to go as a faithful of the Archdiocese of Boston," she said,
"but I
am
not a member of this organization. Š I wanted to see the path they
were
going in. I was denied access to the meeting because this was just
for
members and they wanted to discuss their actions with so-called
freedom."
McKinley
has also repeatedly asked to meet with the leaders of the
national
Voice of the Faithful organization to clarify their positions, but they
have
failed to respond to her.
Her
own organization was started after individuals attending Voice of the
Faithful
meetings became concerned with the number of dissenting
authors
brought in to speak.
"When
the authors would present a heresy or error, we would stand up
and
direct them to the Catechism and deposit of faith," McKinley said.
"This
led to various techniques of silencing and in some places eventually
lockouts
to orthodox faithful. It makes their voting go a lot smoother if they
lock
out the voices who are obedient to the Catechism and magisterium."
She
said there was a "dichotomy" between what Voice of the Faithful was
saying
to the press and to the bishops and "what was really happening on
the
parish level."
The
keynote speaker at the Newton meeting was Paul Lakeland, who
teaches
liberation theology and is chairman of the religious studies
department
at Fairfield University in Connecticut. In his recent book The
Liberation
of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church, Lakeland
advocates
that the laity be liberated from the shackles of clerical
oppression.
Given
his status in Voice of the Faithful circles and his leadership position
at
a Catholic university, some argue that Lakeland's radical theories might
be
the blueprint for a "structural change" Voice of the Faithful
advocates for
the
Church but has not yet officially articulated. If so, it would brand Voice
of
the Faithful as a full-fledged organ of dissent and would mark its radical
break
with Church teachings.
Greg
Byrnes writes
from
Greenwich, Connecticut.
RosaryCampaign@FaithfulVoice.com
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